Page 67 of Fit for a King

“There’s no way to stop it.”

He took in a breath and let it out. “Do you want to end this? Would that be easier?”

The smart thing to do would be to say yes, end whatever this was between us now, before it went any further. Before I fell even harder. But the word wouldn’t come. Instead, I reached for his hand and pressed a kiss to his palm.

“Nothing about this is easy. But that would be the hardest thing of all.”

He nodded as I let go of his hand. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“I know.”

He didn’t assure me that he wouldn’t, or that this situation wouldn’t—he wasn’t a liar, and we both knew the truth. Instead, he sat with a conflicted look on his face, and I could tell he was running our conversation over in his head.

When his security finally came back to the car and stood in place, signaling all was safe, Nicholas took a deep breath and tapped on the window.

“I’ll be back soon.”

I gave a small smile and reached for his hand, not willing to let him leave like this. “Take as long as they need.”

He nodded, the door opened, our hands fell away, and he was gone.

I watched from behind the tinted glass as Nicholas—no, the King of Valoria—walked up the red carpet on the tarmac and headed toward the main hangar. Then I ordered myself to look away.

Let him go, I told myself. You have to let him go.

I wasn’t sure if I was talking about this moment here and now, or the one I knew would eventually come. But as I dragged my eyes from the broad shoulders and sure stride of the man I was falling for, I reminded myself that that was foolish. If we were anyone but who we were, and where we were, then yes, we could love one another openly, freely. But we weren’t anyone else.

He was the king, and I was his footman.

And at some point those two facts were going to be our undoing.

Maybe it would be smart to end things now, make a clean break. But every time I tried to imagine going back to the way we were, everything inside me twisted into a dark knot of despair.

The heartache was already a guarantee, a foregone conclusion. But I wasn’t going to be the one to end it. Not here and now. Not when his words were still running through my head.

“You make me want to be a better person, a better king for them.”

I couldn’t do it.

That might make me weak, and it would most definitely make this hurt all the more. But until then, I would enjoy these days with the king and memorize the nights with Nicholas, and to hell with any prying eyes and loose-lipped gossips.

I would deal with the consequences of my actions when the time came.

22

NICHOLAS

ALDERMERE ESTATE WAS quieter than Montclair.

That was exactly why my mother had preferred coming here and my father had hated it. He always needed to be surrounded by noise, people, staying busy, while she enjoyed riding horses around the vast property that had been in the royal family for centuries.

It was our summer house, and our stop for the evening before we joined Alejandro for the tour tomorrow on the Solterra side of the Valoria/Solterra border. I’d be forced to stand beside the man the country expected me to marry, while Noah would be somewhere in the background, carrying trays or my personal items and forced to watch.

I’d managed to put it all out of my mind for as long as possible, but the day was looming now, and I knew it would change things.

Tonight was all I had.

So I ordered enough dinner for two. No one questioned it, because who questioned the king? If I wanted extra bread, two bowls of stew, and an entire pot of tea sent up to my private balcony after claiming exhaustion for the night, then that was what I’d get.